navigational musings...

As deeply as I admittedly detest the world wide web, I do understand why it's important for sites to be easy to navigate. I took a deeper look at three sites I've been looking at lately, Seattle's website, Folio Literary Management's site, and Bill Brown's website.

For as long as I've loved rainy weather and wanted to write books Seattle has called to me. Naturally I expected to love the city's website, feeling that the great city of Seattle could do no wrong. The website was must less hip than I expected, but upon further inspection I understood how pragmatic the layout proved to be. The site is organized at the top through five different sections - Business in Seattle, Living in Seattle, Visiting Seattle, City Services and City Departments.Each section has a menu on the left hand side of the page which directs you to more specific information. The layout is the same for each section, making the site easy to navigate. Each section also includes a relevant drop down menu in the right hand corner which directs the viewer to even more information. Once you narrow down your field of inquiry, finding an answer to your question is absolute cake. The site is not as jazzy as I'd like it to be but organizationally it's pretty top-notch.

Folio Literary Management's website looks completely doable to me. All menu's are located at the top of the page, directly beneath the header. Each menu is a drop down menu with a list of options which, when clicked, take you directly to the page which deals with the specific subject matter.There aren't any hard to find links or hidden pages. The website is very straight forward and simplistic. I like the site because I don't think it's overly optimistic for me to be confident in my ability to recreate a similar layout. I think of the three sites that I took a closer look at, this one is the one I'd be most likely to follow in the creation of my own site.

Bill Brown's internet base is as different as he is. Instead of having drop down menus, or even words to direct the viewer, the website has a series of icons located at the top that take you to it's different pages. The linked words at the bottom take you to a different website entirely, a site where Bill Brown merch can be purchased.  As much as I like the creativity behind the icons this site is more difficult to navigate than the previous two. If you're looking for something specific that Bill Brown has done, or has to say, it'll take a little while to find it. I really like the single picture in the middle; I like how clean and uncluttered the home page looks. But I think the navigation is unclear, and I don't think that makes for a good website.